FRANK BUCKLAND'S REMINISCENCES, 
251 
be given : the magnificent skeleton of the Mylodon is a 
beautiful instance in which his reasoning on the probable 
use of the enormous air cells between the tables of the 
skull in connection with the trees it uprooted was con¬ 
firmed by the safety of the real covering of the brain, 
and the recovery of this large creature from enormous 
fracture of the outer table, received we know not how 
many thousand years ago. It was but the necessary 
tribute to his eminence in these sciences that, on his 
becoming a resident of the Deanery of Westminster, Dr. 
Buckland should be appointed a trustee of the British 
Museum ; and also one of the trustees of the Hunterian 
Museum at my own college, where he was a frequent donor 
and visitor. Among the principal of his gifts to the 
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons may be 
mentioned, besides numerous fossil bones, etc., the skeleton 
of the now well-known gigantic bird the Dinornis or Moa, 
the bones of which were sent to him by a gentleman 
named Williams, whom Dr. Buckland had requested to 
transmit to him any fossil bones he might find in his 
missionary excursions in New Zealand ; the skeleton of 
Billy the Hyena, that lived nearly a quarter of a century 
under the care of the late Mr. Cross at Exeter Change, 
and subsequently at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. The 
skeleton of an enormous bull-trout caught near Drayton 
Manor, and presented by the late Sir Robert Peel, was 
rescued from the kitchen, at Dr. Buckland’s suggestion, for 
a more glorious fate. 1 
“ 1 Whenever lectures on any interesting subject were 
given in the theatre of this most valuable, noble, and 
priceless institution, Dr. Buckland was ever present, note- 
’ “ Since becoming Inspector of Salmon Fisheries I have examined 
a painting of this fish in the possession of Professor Owen at his house 
in Richmond Park. I believe it was an old salmon kelt very much out 
of condition. Fancy a Prime Minister and his learned friends sitting 
down to eat an old kelt at a dinner-party! I fear none of the savants 
present at Drayton knew much of the salmon or of the science of 
salmon culture.”—See Note by Frank Buckland, Bridgewater, 4th ed. 
